Here are some examples of what I'm talking about.
I took these pictures at an airshow a few weeks ago. In the camera's viewfinder, they all looked sharp, but when you see them on the computer you can see that one of them is slightly out of focus. If I just used autofocus all the time, I only get good focus sometimes. But when I do it manually I can get a crisp one once in a while. Too many times I've noticed this and I got home and realized that my "cool shot" was all blurry. Since I didn't take enough pictures, I was left with nothing good. Now I take multiple shots of the same thing to increase my chances of getting a good shot.
I did that at the airshow, and took 3 shots which looked identical in viewfinder screen. But on my computer's monitor they looked much different.
Compare these two:
Slightly out of focus, looks like a low res camera took it.
In focus, picture looks much more crisp.
I also like using manual focus so that the subject is in full focus but the rest is slightly out of focus. This gives you a sharper picture in my opinion since the camera isn't trying to focus on everything at once. It also draws your attention to the thing that's in focus. Like this:
A-10 gun (manual focus)
Then, to get a good pic of something really up close you need to use your macro mode. Without using macro, holding the camera up close is just going to get you a blurry picture. Here, you can even see the little cracks in the end of the gun barrel:
A-10 gun macro
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